Sunday, March 20, 2011

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico resigns. Was it Gunwalker? "Americans put up the weapons and Mexicans put up the dead.” Permanent damage to relations?

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico resigned Saturday after angering Mexican President Felipe Calderon over leaked diplomatic cables that bluntly described shortcomings in Mexico's 4-year-old war on drug cartels.

Carlos Pascual, a veteran diplomat who arrived in Mexico in 2009, helped retool U.S. aid in the drug war to place greater emphasis on improving judicial institutions and civic involvement than on weaponry.

But the embassy's analyses in confidential cables of Mexico's military-led drug strategy, which included praise but noted interagency rivalries and called the Mexican army "risk averse," raised hackles. . .

In addition to the leaked cables, which many neutral observers viewed as largely accurate, Pascual raised eyebrows by dating the daughter of Francisco Rojas, a ranking legislator from the main opposition party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The party appears in a strong position to retake the presidency next year after 12 years of National Action Party rule.

There is no mention in any of the "mainstream" press stories about Pascual's resignation that the Project Gunwalker Scandal had anything to do with it. It was however, I am told, the straw that broke that camel's back.

. . . Earlier this month the Center reported that agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms permitted suspected straw buyers to obtain weapons in the U.S. without preventing the guns from being trafficked south of the border, as part of an operation called “Fast and Furious.”

Mexican government officials insist they were unaware of the operation’s reach into Mexico. The nation’s leading prosecutor has launched an internal fact-finding investigation amid calls by Mexican regulators for a thorough probe.

“We didn´t get to know, and we could never have known, and we would have never approved an operation that entailed any sorts of arms trade, or a controlled traffic of weapons from the US into Mexico,” said Jorge Alberto Lara, Mexico’s Deputy Attorney General, in a statement late last week. According to Lara, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, known by its Spanish acronym, PGR, was informed of an operation in January that detained 20 people involved with arms smuggling in the Phoenix area.. But Lara said his agency did not know that operation was part of a larger scheme that allowed guns to “walk” into Mexico.

That announcement roughly coincided with a weekend statement from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, which said Mexican law enforcement had indeed been briefed on ATF operations on the U.S. side of the border.

“There is no contradiction between the statement of the Mexican government and the information provided by the United States concerning an operation that dismantled a major arms trafficking ring that has been called Fast and Furious. The operation took place on U.S. territory and arrested 20 defendants on January 25, 2011,” the statement says. “After the arrests … reports emerged alleging that the operation could have entailed a transfer of arms from the United States to Mexico. Attorney General Holder has called for an investigation. He has stated unequivocally that such actions, if true, ‘would not be acceptable.’ He affirmed that he ‘made that clear to attorneys and agents in charge of ATF.’

“The alleged transfer of arms to Mexican territory at this point is exactly that — an allegation,” says the statement, which is listed as a “clarification” on the embassy’s website.

But that statement has not calmed the political waters in Mexico. Calderon’s political opponents have criticized what they say is his lukewarm response to the “Fast and Furious” revelations.

On Tuesday, Mexican Green Party federal legislator Pablo Escudero presented a formal accusation to the PGR, which in the Mexican political system would oblige the government to begin a criminal investigation of the operation.

Meanwhile, leaders of the nation’s principal political parties are demanding the removal of Carlos Pascual, the US ambassador to Mexico. The Mexican Senate and Chamber of Deputies have called high-ranking government officials to testify about the “Fast and Furious” operation and its consequences.

Even the Catholic Church in Mexico reacted harshly, slamming the U.S. government in the Sunday newsletter of the Mexico City Archdiocese.

“Some U.S. officials’ cynicism has no limits,” church officials wrote, calling it hypocritical that the United States works hard to stop the flow of immigrants going north, while it does nothing to stop the lethal flow of weapons into Mexico.

According to ATF agent John Dodson, who spoke with the Center for Public Integrity, the agency knew some of the guns would cross the border and could find their way into the hands of drug traffickers in Mexico. Higher-level agency officials told the Center they felt it was necessary to let the guns move in order to make a bigger case against cartel operatives, rather than low-level straw buyers.

Two assault rifles the ATF was said to be tracking were later found at the scene of shooting, in Arizona, that claimed the life of US Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry.

In Mexico the operation is now seen as a violation of national sovereignty.

Many have also expressed outrage that the U.S. government might have helped jeopardize the lives of people in Mexico. Since 2008, Mexican government statistics say 35,000 people have been killed in the country’s war on drugs; many were innocent civilians caught in the middle of gunfire.

“Instead of restricting violence, (operations such as these) generate even more of it,” said anti-drug war activist Isabel Miranda de Wallace in an interview Monday. “We believe the American government hasn’t done its share in the control of arms trade.”

Miranda de Wallace’s son was a kidnap victim in 2005, and last year she discovered he was subsequently murdered.

“The Americans seemed really upset when one of their agents died here,” she said. “But it appears that all of the Mexican lives lost in this don’t add up to the same value for them.”

Nationalistic rants have been aired in recent days. Former Mexican Foreign Minister and current Senator Rosario Green wrote in an editorial that this is not the first time the U.S. has acted behind the back of the Mexican government; she referenced episodes in the late 90s, such as “Casablanca,” an anti-money laundering operation.

“This can be one of many operations we have no clue of,” said Mexican federal legislator Esthela Damián, a day after she filed a proposal to ask top officials to testify on the matter. “This is an opportunity for lawmakers and the Executive branch to get to know details on the scope and impacts of operation ... Sure, there must be secret information, but it mustn’t be held from the Congress.”

Other analysts said they believe this episode will have long-lasting repercussions, affecting binational cooperation in the struggle against well-financed and highly organized criminal organizations.

“This gives the anti-Americans and the radical nationalistic politicians’ strong arguments to oppose further cooperation,” said Mexican national security expert Raúl Benitez. “This case strengthens the belief that Americans put up the weapons and Mexicans put up the dead.”

Drug war analysts said it has taken years and hard work to build trust among Mexican and American officials in several agencies with stakes in the fight against the cartels. In recent years thousands of Mexican marines, soldiers, agents and forensic workers have been trained by U.S. experts.

“We saw what happened in the Gulf of Mexico last year — U.S. and Mexican Marines training together — as the beginning of collaboration,” said José Maria Ramos, a researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, in the border city of Tijuana. Last year there were even key arrests made of drug barons in operations that used U.S. intelligence.

Security expert Raúl Benitez believes the controversy over the Fast and Furious operation may become a major setback for the heart of the combined U.S. -Mexico response to drug traffickers, the Merida Initiative, which has had the executive branches of each country working together.

“The cooperation will change and become an agency-by-agency model. And it could deteriorate more ... There could be two years of nationalistic reaction here, especially during the upcoming (presidential) elections. This could fuel the nationalists here who question the need for Mexico to collaborate with the United States on this.”

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.